The indictment of Adelanto Mayor Pro Tem Jermaine Wright (pictured) on federal bribery and attempted arson charges is the latest development in a decades-long history of corruption and other illlegal activity in the embattled city.

Adelanto just can’t seem to shake its decades-long history of corruption.

For more than 30 years, the city has been mired in multiple scandals involving elected officials, members of its former police force, and even an animal control supervisor.

And more than four years after the city declared a fiscal emergency and announced it was staring a $2.5 million deficit in the face, the Justice Department on Nov. 15 indicted Councilman Jermaine Wright on charges of receiving a $10,000 bribe and attempting to burn down his restaurant, Fat Boyz Grill, to collect on a $300,000 insurance policy.

The alleged bribe was given by an undercover FBI agent posing as a man wanting to set up a marijuana transportation business in the city, and evidence obtained on the attempted arson charge was gathered by another undercover FBI agent whom Wright was allegedly conspiring with to burn down his restaurant, according to a sworn affidavit filed in federal court.

Wright will next appear in U.S. District Court in Riverside on Dec. 6 for an arraignment.

While Adelanto means “progress” in Spanish, Jack Pitney, a professor of government and politics at Claremont McKenna College, believes another Spanish phrase is more suitable to the embattled High Desert city nine miles northwest of Victorville: Pueblo chico, infierno grande, which in English means “Small town, big hell.” It is also the name of a Mexican telenovela.

The city’s remoteness, high poverty rate, and lack of government oversight all likely factor into its checkered past, Pitney said.

“Corruption, like fungus, grows in the dark,” Pitney said in a telephone interview. “Lack of attention provides an opportunity for people to make a dishonest buck. It’s easy to overlook the bad things that go on in small towns, and when things are overlooked, bad things can happen.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Adelanto’s population, as of July 1, 2016, was 33,391. More than 40 percent of residents live in poverty, and 44 percent speak a language other than English at home. Only 67 percent of the city’s population has graduated high school — only six percent have college degrees — and roughly 16 percent of persons under the age of 65 do not have health insurance. The median household income is $33,298, Census figures show.

The city neighbors the former George Air Force Base, which closed in 1993 as a result of the Base Realignment and Closure action in 1988. Like the Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, which closed a year later, both base closures meant the loss of thousands of jobs from their respective cities or neighboring cities, whacking the local economy hard.

Pitney said that Adelanto’s high poverty rate could be a trigger for corrupt activities involving public officials and cited the cities of Bell and Compton as examples.

“Poor people just don’t have the time or availability to engage in civic watchdog activity,” Pitney said. “If you have to work three minimum wage jobs just to keep food on the table, you don’t have time for that.”

The case of Jermaine Wright, who has not responded to requests for comment following his Nov. 7 arrest, is only the latest in Adelanto’s long track record of officials accused of criminal activity.

In 2009, former animal control supervisor Kevin Murphy was convicted of drowning more than 50 kittens between July and October 2007. He told authorities that “the city of Adelanto told him to drown the kittens” — an allegation the city flatly denied.

In April 2008, former Mayor Jim Nehmens and his wife were convicted of embezzling more than $20,000 from the Adelanto Little League from 2004 to 2006. They were each sentenced to six months in jail.

In 1997, former Adelanto Police Chief Philip Genaway was sentenced to four years in prison for stealing $10,000 from the department’s canine unit. Two other officers were jailed for beating a handcuffed man and forcing another to lick his own blood off the floor.

In 1994, Tom Thornburg, who had served a year in prison on federal drug smuggling charges, was appointed mayor.

In 1993, the San Bernardino County Grand Jury scolded the city in its annual report, alleging possible misuse of public funds and election fraud. It also questioned the legality of the city’s spending of redevelopment funds to file lawsuits and accused city officials of overspending and inappropriate behavior.

Riverside attorney Tristan Pelayes, who served as Adelanto mayor from 2000 to 2003, is a former deputy county counsel for San Bernardino County and a former sheriff’s deputy, touts himself as bringing the city its first supermarket — Stater Bros. — and disbanding the city’s corruption-plagued police department to contract with the Sheriff’s Department.

But it was a long, challenging three years for Pelayes.

“When I was mayor, I was both an attorney and a sheriff’s detective, and you could pretty much say I knew a crook when I saw one,” Pelayes said in a telephone interview. “I had to threaten people with prosecution and investigations because they were always trying to do the wrong thing.”

Former San Bernardino County District Attorney Dennis Stout, who oversaw the trial of Genaway and two of his officers in the late 1990s, told The Sun in 2010 that the now defunct Police Department had a hard time recruiting officers of caliber.

“So they always recruited people with baggage,” Stout said at the time. “It seemed like every cop with a bad jacket wound up in Adelanto.”

Pelayes noted another incident that generated controversy involving former Councilman William Hartz, who pushed to fill a vacant seat on the council with Jerry Steffanus, without informing his colleagues on the board that Steffanus was his half-brother. Steffanus was appointed to the council, which subsequently triggered recall campaigns against the two councilmen.

Mayor Rich Kerr did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story, nor did City Manager Gabriel Elliot.

Councilman Charley Glasper, who has served on the council off and on since 2004, said in a telephone interview that the problem does not lie with the city, but with a few morally bankrupt individuals making poor choices. He doesn’t buy arguments that poverty, geography and lack of government oversight factor into the city’s reputation as a Wild West town.

“I think it all boils down to bad decision-making and personal immorality,” said Glasper, 81, a High Desert resident of more than 30 years and Adelanto resident for more than a decade.

He said the problems Adelanto faces are no different than any other city in the Victor Valley and elsewhere.

“They have issues in Victorville, Hesperia and Apple Valley,” said Glasper. “And look at what’s going on in Washington with elected officials there. Elected officials there are no different than ones here.”

Glasper, who said he condemns Wright’s alleged conduct and believes he should resign from the council, takes great pride in his city and has no plans of leaving.

“I like this city. I’ve been here for quite awhile now and I intend to stay here, and when the Good Lord calls me home, I’ll be here,” Glasper said.

Pitney said there is no easy answer for Adelanto in resolving its public corruption and transparency problems.

Breathing economic vitality into the city, said Pitney, is one way to curb such activity, but that’s easier said than done. County government can assume more responsibility, but that presents a whole other set of problems.

“I can’t think of a silver bullet here,” he said.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated from a previous version to correct the name of a former Adelanto Mayor, Tom Thornburg, who had served time in federal prison on a drug smuggling conviction.

Joe Nelson is an award-winning investigative reporter who has worked for The Sun since November 1999. He started as a crime reporter and went on to cover a variety of beats including courts and the cities of Colton, Highland and Grand Terrace. He has covered San Bernardino County since 2009. Nelson is a graduate of California State University Fullerton. In 2014, he completed a fellowship at Loyola Law School's Journalist Law School program.